Sally Mann Overview

Sally Mann is an American photographer living and working in the South of the US. Much of her photography is leashed to her family's land in Virginia, though her bodies of work are explorations throughout the South. Mann has explored topics... [more]

Sally Mann is an American photographer living and working in the South of the US. Much of her photography is leashed to her family's land in Virginia, though her bodies of work are explorations throughout the South. Mann has explored topics ranging from youth, landscape, death, decay, and geography. She works in analog large format black and white photography and had more recently produced What Remains utilizing the wet plate/collodion process. This is especially pertinent when considering the location of her landscape photography (deep South) and the photographers who used to roam the same land taking photos in the same manner (Alexander Gardner, Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, etc). She has been awarded several fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship three times (1982, 1988, 1992) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1987. She has permanent collections in several galleries across the US and is represented by Gagosian in NY and LA. She has had several monographs published, including Second Sight, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, Immediate Family, Still Time, Mother Land: Recent Landscapes of Georgia and Virginia, What Remains, and Deep South. Mann says that she photographs what she loves, and this is evident through her intimate images of her daughters, son, and pets. The photos of her family have come under attack for their content, but overall her images have received tremendous reviews and legitimacy in spite of what many found objectionable. In 2001, she was even named "America's Best Photographer" by Time magazine. She has been the subject of two films, Blood Ties and What Remains (both directed by Steve Cantor), that reveal much of her process and personality as she works on What Remains. [show less]